America’s slow, painful shift to enforcing mask mandates Mask enforcement won’t work without education. Lois Parshley Vox

Though 33 states now have face mask mandates, Gov. Pete Ricketts says his state of Nebraska will not be joining them. On Monday, Ricketts doubled down on his conviction that a statewide mask mandate would be too “heavy-handed.”

NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, Aug. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) (the Company) today announced its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies have entered into an agreement with the U.S. government for the large scale domestic manufacturing and delivery in the U.S. of 100 million doses of Janssen's SARS-CoV-2 investigational vaccine, Ad26.COV2.S, for use in the United States following approval or Emergency Use Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

So far, most of the conversation about COVID-19 vaccines has focused on the question of whether researchers can develop an effective vaccine in record time. 

But maybe we should start asking another question as well: Will enough Americans actually get the vaccine for it to be effective? 

“It’s not a vaccine that will save us,” says Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha. “It’s vaccination.” 

Many health departments losing race to warn contacts of COVID victims As the pandemic claims hundreds of American lives daily, many municipalities lack the money and staff to warn people who have been exposed, Reuters found. Reuters

The soaring number of COVID-19 cases in the United States has far outstripped many local health departments’ ability to trace the contacts of those infected, a step critical in containing the virus’ spread.